Even The Natives

Don't Like It!

Army Rule in New Guinea

JJXTRACT from letter written by a

civilian now returned to New Guinea : IT is alleged in some quarters that the natives in PapUa are well and truly fed up with the present administrative set-up. If the natives have said that they are, it does not surprise me. As one who lives in direct contact with several hun dreds of them, and possesses their con fidence, I have been asked, not once but scores of times, “When will the Army Government finish and Mr. Murray’s Government return?”

Personally, I believe that the Military Administration has, for the most part, done a very good job, and is still doing so further on, but the war has moved a long way from here now and military control is no longer justified. Its persis tence beyond the period of necessity has led to a state of affairs which has an unhealthy similarity to that of a coun try under enemy occupation.

Consider these similarities: Censorship used to stifle criticism; a Government in exile: forced labour; a military adminis tration headed by strangers, including a few who have attained positions to which their abilities would never have raised them in normal times; the denial of any expression of opinion; a proposed “new order” to be imposed, apparently, with out the slightest indication of any inten tion to consult the European or native inhabitants: and, finally, what amounts to the socialisation of industry under a most arbitrary form of semi-military bureaucracy.

This organisation here employs Army personnel in numbers larger than the European planters it controls. Its alleged “civilian members” are in fact high ranking military officers, wearing their badges of rank, and its attitude towards small owners and European plantation employees is purely authoritarian.